A balding Australian's thoughts on everything happening in sports

April 28, 2017October 21, 2018

Eric Thames Or Eric Flames?

BET your house on it. Eric Thames can’t maintain this incredible form for an entire MLB season. I mean surely he can’t keep crushing homers and dominating the plate at this rate right? I mean if he were to keep this torrid streak up he would have roughly 85 homers for the season. Barry Bonds holds the single season record with 73. Seems like that stint in Korea helped Thames discover his true talents. The only question now is can the surprise packet stay on track?

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THE month of April has been kind to Thames as he bats .370/.489/.904 and leads the league in most batting categories, including crunching 11 home runs to date. He has been a one man wrecking ball for the 12-11 Milwaukee Brewers in 2017, making the Cincinnati Reds his bitch in the process. In his 25 at bats against the Reds he has contributed eight of his 11 home runs, 11 hits, 14 runs, 13 RBI’s and an OPS of 1.976!! Those stats are out of this world and it’s a shame that he can’t play all his game against Cincinnati. Thames is relishing his return to the MLB after a four year hiatus in which he spent time away from the game and played in Korea. It’s an understatement to say he was popular and successful in Korea after an MVP winning season in 2015 while posting multiple KBO records. His team the NC Dinos even created him his very own song. Cult hero much?

BEOFRE his Korean career, Thames was swinging for the Toronto Blue Jays minor squads after the Canadian based franchise drafted him 219th overall in the 2008 MLB draft. Thames made his MLB debut in 2011 against Tampa Bay while earning his first hit, run and RBI in the contest. Unfortunately he didn’t exactly light the world on fire with the Blue Jays like he is with the Brewers half a dozen years later. He batted at .257 for Toronto in 141 games before they shipped him to the Seattle Mariners. He only lasted another 40 games in Seattle, clubbing at .220 before he lost his spot in the rotation and ping ponged around the league until the end of the 2013 season.

CURRENTLY a hamstring tweak has pretty much drawn a line through the possibility of setting the record for most home runs in baseball’s opening month (the record is 14). The injury isn’t serious and shouldn’t have a massive impact going forward though which is good news for Brewers fans. While Thames has been one of the surprise packets so far this year he still lacks a ton of support from his teammates and as illustrated before, most of his success has come at the hands of Reds’ pitchers. Still it’s nice to see Thames back in the majors clearing the fence with regularity and now the real challenge of maintaining that form comes. So far he’s managed to mash fastballs, change ups, sliders and pitches of all different speeds for home runs, so that bodes well going forward. Time will tell if he’s the real deal or not and I would just like to point out I will not be re imbursing anyone who actually bets their house on Thames’ form slipping. Watch this space.